


what do peter parker and captain kirk have in common? (spoiler: they're trans icons)

by wjjmwmsn5



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Trans Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 18:56:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wjjmwmsn5/pseuds/wjjmwmsn5
Summary: Peter comes out to Ned while they build a Lego Enterprise.





	what do peter parker and captain kirk have in common? (spoiler: they're trans icons)

**Author's Note:**

> This is completely self-indulgent bc I just came out today and my biggest fear of coming out has never been not being accepted, bc I know a lot of people around me would accept me, but more of just the change of perception that they might have of me and sdjflksjdfkldsj idk I really needed something happy and good where Ned doesn’t think differently of Peter at all after he comes out 
> 
> anyway let me know if you enjoy!

The day Peter came out to Ned, he didn’t have anything planned for it. He knew that he wanted to, and it had been brewing in him for a while, but there was no right moment. He always felt like a good time would come when he could blurt it out and be done with it, but he couldn’t. Sometimes he would pull in a breath, open his mouth to blurt it out, and it would die on his lips. They would carry on like he had never considered it. 

But Ned still called him  _ Karen  _ and  _ she  _ and Peter  _ knew  _ that he would be accepting, but the tightness in his chest and the way his heart started going way too quickly held him back, even as the sting of his deadname weighed heavy on him.

He talked to May about it. She told him to sit him down next time he came over. “You know Ned,” she told him. “He’s not going to think anything of it, Peter.” She gave him an encouraging smile and ran a hand through his hair. It was so much shorter now. 

He was pretty sure that Ned suspected, or maybe that was just paranoia. He wasn’t exactly hiding it, but he hadn’t  _ said it.  _ And he wanted to talk to his best friend about it. He wanted his best friend to start calling him  _ Peter  _ and  _ he _ , and he wanted to talk about how May was starting to save up for his hormones, and how this and that and everything else. 

But the next time Ned came over, and he said that he needed to tell him something serious, he ended up just showing him a random funny video and pretending like it was a joke. 

He felt like he couldn’t do it. He felt like he would never do it, and if he could never tell Ned, he could never tell anyone else at school, and when school started back up, his teachers would still be calling him  _ Karen  _ and  _ Ms. Parker _ . 

He didn’t think about telling him for a couple days. Well, okay, he thought about it, but it wasn’t in the  _ front  _ of his head. But it sat around calling at him from a distance, hands cupped so he could hear the reminders echo in his head. But he didn’t consider telling him the next two times he saw him—and they saw each other pretty much every day, going to each other’s houses to hang out.

And then one day they were sitting on Peter’s floor, building a Lego Starship Enterprise. And they were just fucking around, and Ned put on some music, and it was just the two of them hanging out. Like normal. 

“Hey, Kar, hand me that piece,” Ned said, pointing over at something on Peter’s side. And  _ Kar  _ stung as it had started always doing, a sharp little twist in his stomach. 

And Peter just started gesturing at the little Captain Kirk Lego without thinking. “Um. Me too. At Captain Kirk. Me too.” And he didn’t know what was coming out of his mouth, and his heart was going too fast to think properly, but he just wanted to say it so badly. But it felt like the actual words were stuck in his mouth and he felt warm and like the air was glued to his skin, suffocating him. He knew— _ he knew _ —that Ned would be okay with it, but he was just so scared anyway.

“What?” 

“I’m— like Captain Kirk.”

“O…kay? Are you good?” Ned asked. 

He started nodding. “Yes, yeah, I’m fine, Ned, but I’m not Karen, I’m not Kar. I’m more like Kirk, but Jim Kirk isn’t my name.”

Ned just stared at him for a moment, completely confused. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

Peter drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. He was so scared. He couldn’t even say what he was so scared  _ of _ , but he was scared. “I’m not Karen, Ned. I’m Peter. My name is Peter.”

Ned looked at him for another long moment, too long a moment for Peter to bear. “I think I’m still confused. Are you saying you’re a boy?”

Peter nodded, finger gunning at him. Maybe finger gunning wasn’t the way to come out to someone. It didn’t matter. Saying that he was Captain Kirk wasn’t really the way that he would have pictured it either. “Yes, that. A lot.”

“So your name is Peter?” Ned asked him, his voice asking for clarification, not incredulous. It made a little bit of the fear go away, but his heart was still pounding and he realized he was wringing his hands to keep them from shaking. 

He nodded. “Yeah, Peter. Is that a problem?”

“A problem?” Ned asked. He smiled at him a little bit. “Peter”—it felt awesome to hear his name out of Ned’s mouth finally—“that’s so far beyond not a problem.”

“So you’re cool? We’re cool? I’m cool?” he asked, his sentences smashing into each other a little bit.

“Peter, you’re the coolest guy I know.” He leaned over and grabbed the Captain Kirk Lego himself. “Especially since you’re apparently like Captain Kirk.”

Peter smiled at Ned, feeling a little jittery from all of this, but Ned was taking it so well. He couldn’t have asked for anything better. Still, he worried that any minute he would start acting weirdly, or maybe he would thinking about it overnight and would decide that it was a little strange. And they would still be friends, but Ned would be awkward, and they would be awkward, and then they’d drift. That was all ridiculous, but he couldn’t help but fear it. 

“So is Captain Kirk trans too?” Ned asked him. 

Peter grinned even wider. “Oh, yeah. Trans icon. He texted me just last night to tell me.”

“I don’t think you have to be worried about whether  _ I  _ think you’re cool or not if you’re texting Captain Kirk.” 

Peter didn’t want to get lame and sappy, but he thought about how Ned’s opinion was the most important opinion in the world to him. He didn’t know what he would do if he wasn’t best friends with Ned. 

“You never handed me that piece, though,” he reminded him. 

“Oh, yeah,” Peter said, leaning over and grabbing it. He handed it to him and they continued building the Enterprise. Ned asked a couple questions, but he did it casually, like he didn’t have to think about them, like they weren’t calculated, like he wasn’t worried about Peter being different or about saying something wrong. He was just being Ned, and that was exactly what Peter needed. 


End file.
